Agency Blog

Copywriting Tips to be Clearly Seen – and Heard

Copywriting in the advertising industry has drastically changed over the last few years, but with our copywriting tips, you’ll be able stay ahead of the trends and improve your copywriting today. In advertising, cutting-edge technology, combined with tastes and trends that change overnight can be overwhelming. “So much advancement; such a short time.” (Could that be a mantra for today?) This raises the question: What can you to do become a better copywriter in an industry such as advertising? The answer: Copywriting tips that take into account the new and interesting possibilities within marketing and advertising.

Copywriting Tips

Writers: Step up to make your words stand out.

Among the challenges in any kind of creative endeavor is keeping the skillset strong and making improvements when possible. As with physical workouts, the brain power to form thoughts into written words that capture attention needs to remain nimble and exercised. Always keep writing. And be flexible for what changes are ahead for the future.

The personal approach

Keep it personal. Let’s look at email, a popular and powerful means of communicating. With the right curation and proper approach, email can be personalized to give at least the sense the sender is “speaking” to the reader. In a “how to” article for Business2Community, Zak Mustapha stresses the importance of avoiding writing in the first person (“I,” and “me”) or the third person (“he, “she,” “they,” “them,” “their”). Emphasize writing in the second person (“you”). Imagine how the text would sound if you were speaking it to the reader.

Writing in a more personal style is not only effective, but it is good practice for what will be required of copywriters – now and in the future.

Copywriting is finding a new home (literally).

Early last year, in an article for Australian-based B&T Magazine, Christopher Melotti stated in the growing age of smart homes and voice activated technology, a whole new world is open for the craft of copywriting. For example, effectively scripted answers to questions in fully-formed phrases that emulate the tone of how users would ask questions into their smart speakers have become increasingly in demand. The ability to be organic, informal, and user-friendly are the three defining requirements in this new direction of the written-to-voice conversion method of communication.

How to change “copywriting” into “copy-speaking” for voice search

Now for the online world. No copywriting tip takes into account industry changes more so than one attributed to voice search. Evan Varsamis, writing for Forbes, claims it is mandatory to take voice search into consideration when online content is being written. Essentially, as with scripted responses for smart home speakers, writers will have to think about how a user will ask a question when conducting a voice search, and how to craft the best-written results. As CEO of Gadget Flow, an e-commerce marketplace, Mr. Varsamis has put this practice into place by changing the format of standard written posts over to a question-answer approach. This has proven successful, as content has become more relevant to users when they conduct an online search.

This can be accomplished by following these copywriting tips:

Conversational tone:

Going back to the observation listed above of taking a more personal approach, writing in natural tone, with prominent keywords in the headline, page title, URL slug, subheading, and first paragraph of an article, can help lead to better results in search.

Make it mobile:

Content should be crafted with mobile top-of-mind. Keep everything short and to-the-point, including headlines, paragraphs, and use of bullets whenever possible. (After all, we generally don’t “talk” in long-form content, do we?)

Focus on local SEO:

When customers are on the go, and want or need something, they will not want to travel far. Mr. Varsamis suggests including a local audience-centric FAQ section for optimizing voice search-enabled content.

Make it snappy with snippets:

Tying in with the previous point, spacing copy into snippets, along with bulleted lists, can help your copy appear near the top of search results.

Use long-tail keywords:

Since a verbalized question has more words than typing a few text words when conducting a search, including long-tail keywords (i.e., three or four keyword phases) can be beneficial to the written content that “answers” a voice search.

Keep calm and copywrite on, because this craft is not going away anytime soon. It’s simply changing. Between the new need for writing text-into-voice answers in smart home devices, to providing optimized online results when someone is conducting a search via voice, prepare for great new opportunities.

Can your brand use some fresh new content to stand out among your competitors? Call (or write) EGC today.